The Hundred in the Hands
"Summer Gothic"
Location: New York, NY
Websites:
Bio: On the heels of their critically acclaimed EP, This Desert, “Brooklyn-based pop alchemists”* The Hundred in the Hands will release their debut full-length this September ... (more)
on Warp Records. The Fly says their “pounding disco with a post-punk heart is nothing short of perfection… they’ve certainly got bracing dance music nailed”, while Time Out gave their EP “two thumbs up!”
Coinciding with this announcement, the band have moved to London for a Summer of festivals and shows, starting this weekend with Wireless festival in Hyde Park (Saturday, third stage, 4.30pm). Full list of dates below.
The Hundred in the Hands LP is an album of deceptively complex pop songs which hark back to the dance music of NYC’s storied underground. The album is a product of DIY home-recording plus a series of studio sessions in London and New York with contributions by producer friends including Jacques Renault, Richard X, Eric Broucek and Chris Zane.
* - The Guardian
The Hundred in the Hands is Eleanore Everdell and Jason Friedman. The two live in Brooklyn and discovered their shared sensibility for early hip hop, French house and disco, ska and dub, post-punk, British invasion-mod and girl pop from the 60’s through the 80’s and decided to form a band. Their first song—the post-punk rave-up “Dressed in Dresden”—was written and recorded in a couple of days, released online, picked up and released as a 45 by a record shop in the U.K. where they were soon playing shows and coming to the attention of Warp Records. Meanwhile, the two retreated to the bunker to write and record. During that time, Friedman and Everdell focused on deciding exactly who they wanted to be. What they discovered and emerged with were 11 startling new tracks and a precise and deliberate sound.

The band’s self-titled debut album is an epic collection of adventurously crafted, perfectly manufactured and deceptively complex pop songs that embrace the duality between the electronic and the organic, between night and day.


Equal parts mutant disco, 80’s pop queen and Yé Yé girl, Eleanore’s epic vocals and lavish synths—both full and flirty, desperate and demanding—belie a naturalism that’s intensified and offset by Jason’s bass lines, programmed beats and guitars that swerve from angular, full-throttle riffs to vaporous and ephemeral shadows. Jason and Eleanore trade menacing metallic, razor sharp, turns, assembling towering melodies atop pulsing rhythms.


With a brassy carnality, the record veers from Disco dazed, avant-pop (“Young Aren’t Young”) to teenage angst, boredom and pop heartache (“Pigeons”) as Jason’s piercing guitar lines zig and zag with Eleanore’s soaring harmonies and Siouxsie-esque yelps. A late-night dance party (“Commotion”) and Post-R&B dub (“This Day Is Made”, “Lovesick (Once Again)”) spin into mind-bending mash-ups of skuzzy rock riffs and obliterated beats (“Gold Blood”) relieved finally in an austere anti-ballad to failed rebellion (“The Beach”). Elsewhere, glistening, conversational minimal wave (“Killing It”) bleeds into dreamy synth-pop (“Dead Ending”), crumbles into restrained punk (“Last City”) and bursts in the song that started it all—the incisive disco-punk dance-off, “Dressed in Dresden.” “You really can’t help but fall in love with this track”, said Q.

In the end, The Hundred in the Hands is everything all at once and nothing you’d ever expect. Jason and Eleanore bend and blend styles, sounds and eras into something that doesn't feel confused, fake or forced. It just feels fun.
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